Cannon mains and summon portals are like dogs and cats. As soon as I see a summon portal I want to take it down. And that is quite a healthy reflex in TBS missions.

Not here though. At least not regarding the first summon portal at H3…

In “Reversal” you have the task to defeat Hector. Hector is the son of Priamos and has rather red eyes. Reason enough to slaughter him. Besides he has annoyed Achilles a bit because of slaying Patroclus who in turn was an innocent young man and a very dear friend to Achilles. Very, very dear.

Achilles will be present in this mission as “Enraged Achilles”, walking on his own and it will be part of your task to care for him so that he won’t come to harm. Fortunately he has a lot of hitpoints and is somewhat confused where the enemy exactly is.

A possible strategy is this:

1. Clean your base island 1 (the fat orange 1 in the map). Build a boat right away (catapults are useless in this mission). Fulfill your first objective: Kill 2 fallen spearmen. One stands in the north of your base island near the stepping stones with 2 other mobs to keep him company. One will spawn soon from the summon portal to the east.

2. Destroy the Statue Of Poseidon on the island 3 using your boat. Snuggle it in the very upper right corner of F5 so that the enemy cannot reach it and bomb away. Warning: Don’t destroy the statue before you have the objective (after you killed the fallen spearmen). And don’t destroy it while Achilles is standing on stepping stones, they will be flooded a few turns after (see step 5).

3. Move your cannon main (if you have it) to B5 (most upper left point of your base island). With luck you can see already enemy boats which you of course will sink – if not it will help later. By the way: witch will work similar.

4. The rest should watch out for summoned monsters from the stretch of land at 2. Don’t cross the stepping stones and don’t try to destroy the summon portal. Why? Just hover with your mouse over this summon portal and read how many hitpoints it has.

5. After killing the statue of Poseidon on the island 3 it will start to rain. Some turns later (3 in my run) the stepping stones will vanish. Go kill the enemy boats – the first ones hopefully with the help of your already nicely positioned cannon main.

6. Ferry your merry band with your boat to the beach of “4”.

7. Kill the boss.

There is no need to actually enter the island 3. You can destroy the statue of Poseidon at your leisure with your boat. Don’t come too near to the beach though, we don’t want to give the enemy a chance, do we? Oh, and it only works if you have fully upgraded (level 5 training).

I remember from earlier times that the weather changed again and the stepping stones reappeared. That had meant that you won’t be able to replace your boat because the dock will be on the wrong side of the stepping stones. In my last run though, after a long time I hadn’t done it and a lot of patches, it remained rainy the whole time.

It may be that I did not get all the traps. There may be further traps on the island 2 (which you should not enter) and 4 (in some far away nooks).

Help with that is as always appreciated.

Update 2011-10-02: Here is a video I did with Fritz, my (now) level 101 alternative character.

I’m gonna try to do this since I need for 130 upgrade. When you said catapult is not required, that is if you are a cannon main or bringing a cannon merc, right? So if not, catapult is needed to bomb off those boats in A6? Or maybe not really important to take down these early since the boat can sink it down later?

Already tried this. Brought cannoneer, sethed and he 1-shot boat from B4. Only problem I encountered is to find the perfect location for my boat to reach the statue of Poseidon. Took so long that dumb Achilles almost reached island 2. But after that, everything went smooth.

Thanks for your guide btw. This has been very helpful in doing tbs especially in learning how to solo. ;)

Yeah, that is a possibility. However seth’s will damages the boats quite severely (at least my seth’s will does that). Don’t stay too long at sea because then your boat will sink by itself… (not really but you lose a lot of hp).

In Saving Helen sething the boat is really great because the boats are much sturdier there.

On the final island did you try to land on the right of Achilles ( furthest away from the portal ) and try to pull the boss there ? Will the portal mobs come to you ? and if they do, can’t achilles tank them a bit until you take the boss ( they will pass by him if you pull the boss close to the sea + your ship will dps a bit too )

Adrian: The last 3 runs I tried that strategy, quite successfully actually. Achilles can fend a long time for his own. But it depends of your kill speed. Mine is now just high enough that I can take out Hector faster than the opposition can kill Achilles.

The ship does help a lot, too. I try to work out a fool-proof strategy and will eventually update the article.

I changed to staff main last week. I think staff main can do TBS quite good with just 40 Flame blow and my witch is only 82 (I reget A LOT not taking her at lvl 51… *sob*). Anyway It works that kill all the mobs at 1 combo meteor + flame. Here are the things I am concerning about this TBS (Im lvl 104, Oracle 97 with 45~ seth and witch 82 max meteor):

1/ Can the boat still stay on the water and destroy the statue? I did several TBS missions and all i got is training materials without the little wooden puppet icon (damage, speed, attack, blah blah….)
2/ Can Achilles ride the boat to the last island if following as your strategy said not to go to island 2 and 3?
3/ If Achilles can’t ride the boat, would it benecessary for us to follow him? Would it be necessary for him to reach to the boss place by the time we are there?
4/ Can witch with only lvl 80 upgrade successfully complete this quest? Are the mobs tough?

P/s: I am currently having problems with my FLASH on comp so i can’t watch your tutorial videos, if there are important notes that are required, please tell me :( I just hired Ele and minstrel, gotta get those two lvl up fast somehow.

How tough is the boss that you rated “5”? :O, my opinion is just trolling around and stall until he/she’s dead, maybe needed 2-3 resurrect scrolls and 2 times oracle actually has to use her turn for mana recovery, but other than that is that just like boss at lvl 90 Warrior’s Honor one? (BTW i made a mistake on warrior’s honor that to use boat to attacked Polites, it’s quite hard that 1st turn the boss already attack me…. but it’s good to have 2 healers :D)

BTW in video 2 (since now i can watch it *clap clap*), you said you made a mistake when taking down the whole lots of mobs at the middle right to where you docked. If I go straight as you said, would the mobs there be chasing you down? or if we ignore them, they’d be standing there till forever?

So would you suggest the best method for taking on the final area of this mission (assuming your main is not a cannon main) is to take on the boss directly and let achilles distract the stuff around the summon portal? What sort of gear do you need to achieve the necessary killing speed?

I don’t know about my sword main, but my Power Saw main is currently wearing around +1 freezing, with an event +7 freezing saw (60 storm blast, 60 chainsaw blade, 11 destructive instincts), and my witch is lvl98 with around +1 conqueror and charms + bracelets + lvl60 meteor strike (oracle similarly geared). Do you think I’ll have enough killing speed to beat Hector before Achilles falls? Or should I try to take on the SP with my PSaw’s superior damage (relative to my sword main)?

Apparently Achilles is now stronger than several patches before. Now he can survive quite long, even as long as you need to kill the boss. That reduces the difficulty of the mission somewhat. But when Fritz was just in the level to do that mission he had great difficulties to win this mission. He did it, but barely. Keep in mind that in these days he wasn’t geared very well because only lately the “insane amount of gold because of TBS missions” effect started. Hence the rating of 5 (doable with the minimum level but hard).

I tried taking on the SP and failed. It seems now the proper approach is to let Achilles fend for himself and kill the boss (landing in the East, about at E11).

@GuitarMain: There is no guarantee that the mobs outside the aggro range will stand there forever. But mostly they do. So attacking them was inviting them to damage me.

I was doing pretty well on the mission, but then the boat bugged. As in, disembarked me on the north end of the island with the statue of poseidon, when the only button i hit was End Turn. And then I died. THE END.

Tried it again after a couple days (and the bad memories had subsided) and it went pretty well. Witch in +2 freezing in most parts, +2 darkest night for gloves/boots, that and my main’s Chainsaw Blade got oh so close to 1shotting enemies. Regardless, let Achilles tank at the end (like 8 mobs) while I took down the boss and the two enemies who came with. Ended up finishing with Achilles still at 60% health or so despite going through two rounds of attacks while stunned. He is ridiculously tanky.

Hi I’ve been following your guide for sometimes now, and atm I’m on lvl 107 using Instrument main.. so your work really help me alot

I’m playing Indonesia AO and recently we had Spell tower patch implemented already…

I just want to share that the “rain stop” also manage to happen on my runs in this TBS mission

First Run, my connection was disconnected and when I got back in, all the situation came back to as if there’s nothing happen before.. except, the Poseidon statue was gone.. so I just waste my 10 TBS point that day

Second Run, my ship got destroyed and all my party were killed except my witch, and when I was about to built a new one an resurrecting my main+oracle, I saw that the bridges were on the surface and yes, the rain stopped

Fortunately this time, I already taken out all the mobs around Hector and destroyed the summon portal

What happened next was, Achilles and Hector went on a 1on1 duel, and my witch just keep some distance and meteor when the count was ready